European Vacation..............by Laurel Kutash
      After a year of planning, the European Vacation was finally here.  The flight over the Atlantic on Air France was smooth and most of our 42 ski clubbers grabbed some sleep since our first day on the ground involved transfers through two airports and a harrowing bus ride through the Alps to Verbier.  Our first mishap occurred at the General De Gaulle Airport in Paris.  We spent the better part of an hour waiting for a docking stair, were then transferred by bus to the terminal, unloaded, walked around a corner, back out the door, and back onto the same bus to be hauled to another terminal.  
     

 The second small mishap occurred at the Geneva airport when Bert Griffin became separated from her passport.  She and Connie Griffin remained on the incoming side of immigration while yours truly was trying to get the passport through to them from the other side of immigration. Finally, an airport official acted as go-between and handed Bert's passport over.  After several attempts to locate our bus driver, and once found, finding out he spoke only enough English to let us know the toilet on the bus wasn't working, I was beginning to think we were experiencing a "Chevy Chase European Vacation."
      

Once loaded onto the bus and rolling into a scenery so expansive and foreign, my fears were dispelled by the majesty of the Swiss Alps, interspersed with beautiful lakes, mountain sides terraced with vineyards, and the realization that we were actually in it and a part of it. It's difficult to find words to describe the rugged peaks of the Alps, giant rocks coated with green, rust and ochre-colored lichen, nested in blankets of pure white snow.  How do I tell you about the 360 degree panoramic view from the top of Mont Fort, tracing the skyline to locate the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc?  I can't describe what the eye saw and the mind translated into something the heart felt.

      We settled into our "home" at the Rhodania in Verbier, hosted by our new friend, Olivier, and quickly made friends with Crystal and Valerie, our bartenders and waitresses for the week.  The Rhodania is a Swiss Chalet-type hotel, modernized to most people's tastes, with a few remaining "old-world" paraphernalia, like one closet-sized elevator, and one gigantic room key.  We were issued one key per room which locked you in & out, then you hung the key on a huge peg board in the lobby where anyone could access it.  What was the point of locking the room?  We were told that crime was nonexistent and not to try.  We didn't, and by the end of the week had ceased locking our doors.  Ed Eickenberg, having a beer with the boys in the bar, received a call paging "Head."  "Is there a Head here?"  Assuming "Head" was the French
pronunciation of "Ed," he picked up the phone to find out that he had locked his beloved wife, Fran, in their room.

      Our first day of skiing Verbier was fantastic: sunshine, not too much and not too little snow. Some of us rented skis and quickly adjusted to the "fat" boards and loved the feeling of being "nailed" to the slopes.  As with most first days on foreign slopes, we had our share of lost people.  Easy to understand when you realize there are four valleys of skiable terrain!  The first "lost" person was Liz Oldeen who left her poles on the gondola and became separated from her group of Gary Oldeen, Brian Kutash, Bruce Sutter and Rich Siems, for the better part of the day.  Liz showed up at the designated spot for lunch, and guess what?  The guys weren't there.  Barb Knick and myself skied down the cat walk to the base of our village, assuming that the remainder of our group, Joanna Dill, Mark McIntosh, Connie Griffin, Delores Wilsey, and Pam and Garry Good, beat us home.  NOT...they had skied into a different area and had to jump a bus to get back.  The bus driver spoke no English, so Connie showed him the business card of the Rhodania and got the group back to within a block of the hotel.  Ron & Vedo McCloud found themselves in a worse situation when the only chair lift to bring them back to Verbier was closed.  Ron was told it would be a $185 cab ride back.  Vedo pulled out all the stops by pleading and crying until the operator relented and turned the lift back on.  The worst (and almost disastrous) lost people stories occurred when Brad DeBolt, unwittingly found himself in an out-of-bounds area, wedged into a glacial fissure. Brad kept yelling for help until finally someone heard him and pulled him out of the crevice with his ski pole.

      Most evenings, we shared our stories and dinners at the hotel.  The menus were in French and we were becoming more proficient in recognizing French words, particularly when it came to food.  We ate fromage jambon (cheese and ham), lapin (rabbit), poisson (fish), and one great spaghetti feast with several different sauces.  Our lunches during the day were about as adventurous as skiing the Alps.  I have to mention the salad I ordered with chicken livers (I think) and the wonderful white asparagus with honey mustard sauce.  The omelettes were to die for.  (I hate that expression, but just had to use it here.)  Brad Vissering, sticking to what he knew, had frites (French fries) everyday for lunch.  Fearing European Mad Cow Disease, most of us steered away from boef (beef).

      From the sated, smiling faces each evening, I must surmise that these individuals were having one of the best adventures of their lives. Bert Griffin and Rosemarie Etchison covered quite an area, sans skis, and even took the mountain train to the nearby village of Montagny. Cynthia Kukla warrants kudos for being the only female to ski down the challenging face of Mont Fort. Denise Bellanger and Donna Lutkehaus tried the sport of snowshoeing, and Carl Cortese gets the award for finding the most fun piano bar in town, whose manager bore a strong resemblance to "Austin Powers," and who tried to shag me and got me my drinks for free when I sang a duet with him.

      The morning we chose for a side trip into Aosta, Italy was a virtual blizzard by bus.  Our driver, Gregory (who became our designated driver for all our trips up and down the Alps), was a marvel as he put on and took off the snow chains more times then we could count.  Arriving in Aosta, the sun came out, making for a delightful day of sight-seeing, picture-taking, shopping, and of course, eating (this time in Italian instead of French). While trying to convert money at the local bank, Garry Good was barred from entering.  There was this "capsule" (beam me up Scottie thing) you had to enter, one person at a time, to get into the bank.  Evidently, the capsule thought Garry was more than one person and wouldn't allow the door to open. Europe is geared to small people, and this Garry Good phenomena was repeated over and over throughout our trip; elevators that wouldn't move until Garry got off, toilets too small for Garry to enter, shower stalls made for Lilliputians, etc., etc.  

      Our final day of skiing in Verbier was in near whiteout conditions which made for more sloppy slope stories.  Bruce Sutter got a photo of Rich Siems being helped back onto a cat walk after he slid over the edge. Many of us couldn't see the poles outlining the groomed trails and skied into unpacked piles of snow, bringing us to abrupt halts. After struggling in vain to negotiate an uphill catwalk, Carl Cortese finally gave up on the climb and shouted to the rest of the group,  "I'll just stay here. Go on without me. Save yourselves."  At that point, Brad DeBolt, uprooted a trail marker pole and skied it back to Carl, planting it next to him.  Carl, wondering why Brad did that, was met with, "If we need to, we can come back and eat you."  Well, it's stories like that which create legends in ski club histories and we were there, we all survived, and suffered no serious injuries.

      On Friday, we were bussed to Chamonix, France to ski legendary Mont Blanc.  Several people opted to shop, while some of us decided to ski.  I was on the chair lift looking down on what was supposed to be the easiest way down and spied Ed Eickenberg snow plowing. I can't tell you how that one site shook whatever confidence I was harboring about my skiing abilities.  After manipulating, and I mean manipulating, our way through the piles of ungroomed snow and people, we were convinced French skiing was a lot of work.  However, for the notorious four, Roger Gingrich, Bill Harris, David Rademacher, and Tom Kaskubar, they thought it was their best day of skiing and traversed the slopes from LaFlegere to Brevent.  (And most of them slept soundly all the way back to Verbier.)

      As our week of skiing was coming to a close, we split into two groups; those heading back to the U.S. and those who would be staying on in Paris for three days.  The Paris story is for another time.  So as I draw to a close, I would like all to thank Bill Semlak for getting the snow ball rolling on this European Vacation and pay homage to Brian Kutash's tenacity for seeing the "tip" (I mean trip) through all of its various stages.  Thanks to all 42 of you for sharing this adventure with us.  I'm sure the best parts will remain in our memories for years to come and this narrative will only serve the purpose of jarring those memories for you.